Abstract: The first objective of this work was to review the existing literature relating to popular music analysis to determine if standards of harmonic practice within hard rock and heavy metal music have been considered and established. This led to the review of the analytical methods of Guy Capuzzo, Christopher Doll, Walter Everett, Allen Moore, and Ken Stephenson. For the needs of this study, Everett's work (and to a lesser degree, Stephenson's work) is primary as it best summarizes the harmonic schemes used in the pieces analyzed.
Three songs were selected within different subgenres of hard rock and heavy metal: thrash metal (Metallica, “Master of Puppets”), neo-classical metal (Yngwie Malmsteen, “Far Beyond the Sun”), and commercial hard rock (Guns-N-Roses, “Welcome to the Jungle”). These pieces were analyzed extensively to understand the primary harmonic resources that are at work in each. Additionally, the three pieces were compared with regard to their formal elements, melodic materials, texture, and dynamics to draw conclusions about what similarities they share and also how they differ. Depending on the piece and the section under consideration, these three examples exhibited a reliance on modal structures, blues-based materials, and common-practice influences.